Parc Monceau mixes winding paths, old trees, and small architectural follies within a landscape that has changed hands and styles several times. Its picturesque variety began as a private aristocratic garden and became a public park under the Second Empire.
Quick facts
The Duke of Chartres acquired the Mousseau estate in 1769 and commissioned a picturesque garden.
The Rotonde de Chartres was a toll barrier on the Farmers-General wall, built in 1788.
Adolphe Alphand reshaped the surviving grounds as a public promenade from 1861.
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At Parc Monceau, an Egyptian-looking pyramid stands among trees, but it is not an ancient monument. It belongs to an eighteenth-century garden designed to surprise. The site lies in Paris’s 8th arrondissement; the City of Paris now manages it as a public park and lists it as a protected site. Its winding routes and scattered architectural fragments preserve the idea of a walk as a sequence of changing views.
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